12 Things You Might Not Know About The CropLife 100

We are obsessed with lists. Grocery lists. To-do lists. Best-seller lists. Bucket lists. And the “list” goes on.

We can’t live without them. They help us organize our life, restoring order to the chaos. They also create intrigue for us to discover who made them and who didn’t.

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So it should come as no surprise that the most popular content we publish each year is our CropLife 100. This annual ranking of the largest ag retailers in the U.S. is in such high demand from our readers that I can’t imagine the backlash we’d receive if we ever pulled the plug on it. Perish the thought!

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Fortunately, I don’t envision the day that we’ll discontinue the top 100. If anything, we’ll likely increase our editorial coverage throughout the year. And what better way to start than with a list about THE list. Thus, here are 12 things you might not know about the 2014 CropLife 100:

  1. The 2014 CropLife 100 list consists of 57 independent dealerships and 43 cooperatives. Nearly 60% of the cooperatives are ranked in the top half of the list, led by GROWMARK (No. 3), CHS (No. 5), MFA (No. 8) and Southern States Cooperative (No. 9).
  2. Total revenue for all 100 companies in crop input/service sales is $29.9 billion — a new record for the CropLife 100. Nearly 70% ($20.5 billion) of the total comes from seven retailers.
  3. No. 1 ranked Crop Production Services (CPS) has nearly as many retail outlets (720) as the Nos. 28 to 100 ranked companies do combined (723), and 300 more facilities than No. 2 ranked Helena Chemical (420). About half (48%) of the top 100 companies have fewer than 10 retail outlets.
  4. The CropLife 100 company that made the most headlines in 2014 was No. 6 ranked Pinnacle Agriculture Holdings. The company acquired 17 retailers in 2014, including former top 100 company East Kansas Chemical.
  5. Who is new to the list? Four new companies made their debut on the top 100 in 2014: River Valley Cooperative (No. 32), Cooperative Elevator Association (No. 74), Short Lane Ag Supply (No. 93) and Johnson City Chemical
    (No. 100).
  6. Who is off the list? Four former top 100 companies were either acquired in 2014 or closed up shop, thus removing them from the ranking: Husker Co-op, East Kansas Chemical, Hintzsche Fertilizer and Pendleton Grain Growers.
  7. The rankings remain relatively stable from year to year, but these five companies made the biggest jumps up the list from their previous spots: Asmus Farm Supply up eight spots (66 to 58), Valley Agronomics up eight spots (31 to 23), Frenchman Valley Co-op up nine spots (45 to 36), Home Oil Co. up 15 spots (68 to 53), and Frontier Cooperative Co. up 56 spots (91 to 35).
  8. There were also several companies that fell significantly in the rankings. The five biggest movers down from their previous rankings: Wilco-Winfield down seven spots (54 to 61), Sur-Gro Plant Food down seven spots (49 to 56), Cooperative Producers Inc. down eight spots (39 to 47), Griffin Fertilizer down 17 spots (38 to 55) and Cooperative Elevator Co. down 29 spots (47 to 76).
  9. The top 100 company with the most states serviced is No. 2 ranked Helena Chemical with 48. It’s followed closely by CPS (45 states), with Pinnacle Agriculture a distant third (26).
  10. Precision ag services continue to increase among top 100 companies. The top five retailers in generating revenue from it are GROWMARK, Wilbur-Ellis, Helena Chemical, CPS and The Andersons.
  11. The top 10 retailers in fertilizer revenue (CPS, GROWMARK, Helena Chemical, CHS, Wilbur-Ellis, Simplot Retail, Pinnacle Agriculture, MFA, Southern States Cooperative and Tennessee Farmers Cooperative) generated $10.5 billion sales in that category — 71% of total CropLife 100 fertilizer sales.
  12. While most retailers are headquartered in the Midwest, they are fairly widespread throughout the U.S. The states with the most CropLife 100 companies are Iowa (13 headquarters), California (10), Illinois (8), Wisconsin (7), Minnesota (6) and Nebraska (6).

More CropLife 100 Info

You might also want to view the following videos:

To view our latest CropLife 100 rankings and coverage, be sure to check out our December 2014 issue of CropLife® magazine or visit www.CropLife.com/top100.

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